Sunday, January 3, 2010

“Boyfriend might reject idea of marriage - Columbus Dispatch” plus 4 more

“Boyfriend might reject idea of marriage - Columbus Dispatch” plus 4 more

Boyfriend might reject idea of marriage - Columbus Dispatch

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 03:50 AM PST

Dear Carolyn: For seven months, I have been exclusively dating a man whom I am crazy about.

When we first met, he told me he had been single for 15-plus years and "didn't see the need for people to get married if they didn't want kids." (We are both in our 50s.)

Guess what . . . now I do want to get married. What do I do?

-- San Diego

Dear San Diego: Be prepared to say why you want to get married. He sees it as a construct for raising kids. You see it as (blank).

While you're figuring out what (blank) is, also give some thought as to why this man, why now.

There is heavy cultural programming to follow love feelings with marriage planning, and the better you can answer those two fundamental questions, the better your chances of a fulfilling relationship.

As long as you're still pondering it, I suggest you keep your marriage yearnings private.

But if you're able to articulate why marriage matters to you, and if you foresee wanting to marry him, either now or after you log more time together, then tell him.

Another thing to prepare yourself for, before you do speak up: getting shot down. That's true any time you ask anyone for anything.

However, you're asking for, essentially, the rest of his life, knowing his bias against that. That raises the risk of a no and with it the pressure on your next move.

Dear Carolyn: For nine months I have been dating a pretty terrific guy. I haven't been particularly evasive or particularly honest about my past. There's a lot I think is private and a lot I'd like to tell him, but not quite yet.

We're meeting up with some of my old friends, and I can't get out of it. I dread the occasion, as I think "old stories" will be told. These won't be flattering.

How do you know when someone is ready to hear the unvarnished past?

-- Anonymous

Dear Anonymous: Someone is ready to hear your unvarnished past when it's the right someone for you and when that right someone is a real grown-up who knows that we're the sum of our entire pasts, not just the photo-album parts.

Your chances of recognizing the right person are much better if you, too, are at that stage, where your past is just something that is; people read your cues. (You should try to get the memo out to your friends.)

Write to Carolyn Hax -- whose column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays -- at tellme@wash

post.com.

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Alabama Democrat Casts His Lot With G.O.P. - New York Times

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 07:50 PM PST

ANDALUSIA, Ala. — Among the men who gather every morning at 6 o'clock at the Church's Chicken here on Three Notch Street, there is general agreement that the Obama administration is doing a very bad job of running the country. And the stakes are as high, as one coffee drinker put it, as the survival of the country's culture, economy and way of life.

Yet this group is represented in the House by a Democrat, Bobby Bright. And they are actually fond of him. For now.

"I like Bobby," said Glenn Cook, 72, a retired electrical engineer. "I think he's a great guy and a fine Christian man. But when he first came out, I wished that he'd been a Republican."

In the deep-red states of the South, it is very hard these days to be a Blue Dog, as members of the group of 52 centrist House Democrats are known. Suspicions about the Obama administration's expansive view of government power have made the Democratic label so toxic in some parts of the South that merely voting like a Republican — as many Blue Dogs do — may no longer be enough.

If that is true, Mr. Bright recently became Alabama's sole test case.

On Dec. 22, Representative Parker Griffith, a freshman representing the northernmost district in the state, announced that he was switching to the Republican Party. His defection was a bad sign for Democratic hopes of retaining seats in the South, specifically in Alabama, which has moved ever more securely into the Republican column since the mid-1960s, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 permanently altered Southern politics.

Gratitude still abides in Mr. Griffith's district for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is one reason voters there have not sent a Republican to Congress for over 140 years. Mr. Griffith's calculation that he probably could not win as a Democrat indicates that the hostile reaction to Democrats over the past year has been intense enough to turn an already deeply red state — one that President Obama lost by more than 20 percentage points in 2008 — even redder.

And it leaves, standing alone as the sole white conservative Democrat in the state's Congressional delegation, Mr. Bright, 57, who represents the men in Church's Chicken. Mr. Bright has announced no plans to switch parties. If one counted only by his voting record, it would not seem to make a difference anyhow.

"Bright and Parker won, despite the poor showing of Obama, because they are conservative and therefore not open to attack from Republicans on social issues like abortion, prayer, guns and taxes," John Anzalone, a Montgomery-based Democratic pollster, wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Anzalone argued that Mr. Griffith's calculation was likely to end up hurting him, since he now has to face a Republican primary, while Mr. Bright's conservative record could potentially expand his base.

Mr. Bright's victory in 2008, the first by a Democrat in this district for nearly 45 years, was something of a fluke. He is uniquely qualified: a former mayor of Montgomery, he was popular in the largely black areas in his district that are near the city. But he was born the 13th child of a poor sharecropper in the quiet country to the south, a largely white region of peanut farms and cotton fields known as the Wiregrass. The area is deeply conservative, but it likes its own, and Mr. Bright is one of them.

The huge turnout by black voters in the 2008 election, coupled with some infighting on the Republican side, resulted in Mr. Bright's winning the Second District by less than 1 percentage point.

Since winning, Mr. Bright has been such a purebred Blue Dog that he is practically red. He has voted with the Republicans on every significant piece of legislation of his term, including the health care overhaul, the budget and the "cap and trade" energy legislation. The reaction to his rare party-line votes helps explain why: a largely pro forma vote to keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House has drawn the ire of some of his supporters.

But staunch Republican voters in his district point to the advantages of having a Democrat in Washington: Mr. Bright is constantly making the rounds — because he has to — and he votes like a man who knows he is being watched.

"I don't believe that Bobby would survive if he didn't vote conservative in this district," said Mike Barefield, 60, a conservative and normally Republican voter in Ozark who supports Mr. Bright. "It doesn't take but one or two votes to change people's minds."

Mr. Bright declined to comment for this article.

Political analysts say Mr. Bright is smart to pay attention to the Wiregrass voters. He might not be able to count on such an enormous turnout among black voters in 2010 — even if, as is possible, Representative Artur Davis becomes the first black Democratic nominee for governor in Alabama history — leaving Mr. Bright to depend on people who normally vote Republican, a tall order.

"The average guy out there walking the streets, he doesn't know how anybody votes," said Larry Lee, who has run for the seat as a Democrat three times. "They hear all this stuff about Obama's making us all socialist and Pelosi's riding a broomstick to work. I think he's going to have a very tough row to hoe."

The Republican Party is backing a Montgomery city councilwoman, Martha Roby, but so far few in the Wiregrass know her name.

"How do you campaign against a Democrat who votes like a Republican?" asked Cleveland Poole, the chairman of the Butler County Republican Party.

Mr. Poole thought about that and answered with another question: "When Nancy Pelosi finally comes down to him and says, 'We've given you a pass on all this other stuff, I need you now,' is he going to go with the party?"

Conservative voters in the Wiregrass have considered that prospect, and it gives serious pause to defenders of Mr. Bright.

At the same time, there are such things as white liberals in southern Alabama — staunch union members and the few remaining yellow dog Democrats — and they are not so patient.

"To me, he's of no value to the Democratic Party," said C. T. Weed, 75, a retired contractor at the Fort Rucker Army base and now mayor pro tem of Pinckard. "If you're going to be a Baptist, be a Baptist."

At Church's Chicken, the token Democrat, Rayford Davis, a 69-year-old retired insurance agent who is known as Pee Wee, is a little more forgiving. He says that the resistance to the Obama agenda around here is based on racial prejudice, and that Mr. Bright, over time, could bring his constituents around.

The others bristle at accusations of racism and say the problem is Mr. Obama's crowded agenda of major changes, with the potential deal breaker being the health care bill.

"If it passes, there's going to be people who will go against Democrats no matter how he voted to try to get them all out," said Mr. Cook, adding that he supports Mr. Bright, cautiously.

But while some Republicans who back Mr. Bright do not want him to switch parties, considering it a sign of untrustworthiness, Mr. Cook is among those who would welcome it. In that case, he would not have to temper his support.

"If Bobby switched to the Republicans," he said, "I'd put a sign in my yard."

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After Americans Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays - Democratic Underground.com

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 07:50 PM PST

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about "curing" homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda's capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was "the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda" — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how "the gay movement is an evil institution" whose goal is "to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda's government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda's minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

...

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality" — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda...

"Scott Lively is responsible for stoking homophobic sentiments in Uganda to such an extent that Ugandan lawmakers, largely basing their reasoning on Lively's anti-gay viewpoint, introduced legislation to punish homosexuals with the death penalty"

Contact Scott Lively: http://www.defendthefamily.com/help/contactus.php

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NFL to weigh rule changes after studying helmets - WBOC

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 06:45 PM PST

By HOWARD FENDRICH
AP Sports Writer

As the NFL moves into the playoffs, the league is searching for a safer helmet and considering offseason rule changes to provide more protection from concussions.

Congress is still on the NFL's case, too, and will examine head injuries in football again Monday, a day after the regular season ended and Miami Dolphins quarterback Pat White was carted off the field because of a helmet-to-helmet collision in a game.

One researcher who recently conducted crash-dummy tests on five manufacturers' helmets for the NFL worries about what good will come of efforts to measure how much safer players are than they were a decade ago and understand where improvements could be made.

"There's some really frightening potential for how this data is used," David Halstead of the Southern Impact Research Center said in a telephone interview. "In other words - and the NFL, I'm sure, wouldn't like me saying this - my concern is that somebody makes a direct comparison and says, 'This helmet performed 40 percent better, so you're 40 percent less likely to be injured.' That's absolutely incorrect."

Halstead is particularly concerned the study will be construed by high schools or youth leagues as recommending a particular helmet, even if the NFL insists that's not its intention.

Instead, NFL officials say the goal is to do basic scientific research that will give players and equipment managers more information about helmets and will help manufacturers know where they could improve equipment.

"The majority of players are still wearing helmets designed in the '90s," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "That's a key reason we wanted to initiate more research on helmets."

The NFL and Riddell have had a licensing/sponsorship arrangement since 1990, and teams have been eligible for price breaks from the company, although that discount provision will be eliminated next year under a deal set to expire after the 2013 season. Each player can choose what helmet he wears; most go with Riddell, whose Web site notes it's the "Official Helmet of the NFL."

Another possible result of testing: The league could use the data to "see if there are potential ruleschanges that should be made," said Jeff Pash, NFL executive VP and chief counsel. "This study can be used by our competition committee and others to find, for example, that there are certain impacts that are particularly difficult to attenuate the forces. Maybe that can go into consideration of how you set up the rules of the game and how you enforce those rules."

The first round of the NFL's helmet testing, done from October to December at Halstead's lab and a lab in Canada, looked at how two helmet models made 10 years ago and present-day models responded to blows at various angles and speeds, up to about 22 mph.

Specific data won't be released before March, but Halstead did offer this summary: "Some of the new helmets, not surprisingly, tested significantly better in certain locations than the 10-year-old helmets. Some of the new helmets didn't perform any better than a 10-year-old helmet, which is a little surprising."

The league also is paying attention to tests being done on mouth guards to see whether they could play a role in helping prevent concussions. The NFL's Aiello said the league has not ruled out making use of mouth guards mandatory.

Halstead is scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing at Detroit's Wayne State University School of Medicine on Monday, the House Judiciary Committee's second recent look at football head injuries.

Other witnesses slated to appear include former NFL players Kyle Turley and Ted Johnson, as well as Ira Casson, a doctor who resigned as co-chairman of the NFL's concussion committee amid accusations of bias. The House panel had hoped Casson would testify at its Oct. 28 hearing; he did not attend and later said he was not formally invited.

"That was the voice that was missing, the dog that didn't bark," NFL Players Association medical director Thom Mayer said.At that session, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was grilled by some lawmakers about his league's concussion policies and connections between head injuries and brain disease. Since then the league has instituted stricter return-to-play guidelines for players showing concussion symptoms, and required each team to enlist an independent neurologist as an adviser. Goodell will not appear Monday.

"There's been good progress," Mayer said. "Our intention is to keep the pedal to the metal and make sure we continue to move forward."

Mayer said the NFL is close to agreeing that reports team doctors and trainers deliver to the league about individual players' concussions will be simultaneously given to the NFLPA.

"After all," Mayer said, "they're our players."

Casson's resignation was announced in November, and the league aims to select a replacement before the Super Bowl. There are five finalists, according to Mayer, who said he will help the NFL's medical adviser recommend a new leader of the concussion committee.

Lawmakers also plan to ask an NCAA representative about Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who was fired after allegations surfaced that he mistreated a player diagnosed with a concussion.

"If true, this suggests there needs to be a culture change, where coaches and players understand and abide by concussion diagnoses and recommendations," committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., planned to say in his opening remarks.

In Turley's written testimony, obtained in advance by the AP, he speaks candidly about having multiple concussions, saying his "faculties continue (to) degenerate and my life continues to change."

Turley, who played for the Saints, Rams and Chiefs from 1998-2007, also writes that "the egregious negligence of NFL team medical staff is fairly universal, that its effects are perpetuated and magnified by the NFL disability committees, comprised of the owners and the players union representatives, which continually deny retired players' disability claims wrongfully, and that active players continue to be put into the game after suffering concussions."

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Deadly trend in decline: 2009 saw only 6 homicides in Calhoun County - Anniston Star

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 06:59 PM PST

Law-enforcement officials across Calhoun County held their breath in December as 2009 ended with only six apparently criminal homicides county-wide. Following 2008's 20 homicides, the area may be catching up with a national downward trend of deadly crimes.

Two of the county's homicides last year took place in Anniston's city limits; the others were in the surrounding communities of Ohatchee, Saks, Wellborn and Piedmont. Five of the six deaths were caused by gunshot wounds.

Other violent deaths, including the apparent suicide of one man believed to be responsible for the death of his wife, bring the total to nine.

Shocking as the circumstances are in each case, the total effect of death from violent crime was much diminished in 2009 from previous years. That likely is little consolation to the friends and family of each person who lost a life.

The Breakdown

• May 14 — McKinley Mac Young, 47, died after he was shot in the face with a small-caliber handgun at his home at 2905 Newborn St. in Saks. Blaine Justice Lovell, 20, of Ohatchee, is charged with murder in the case. Police said the gun was only a foot from Young's face when he was shot.

Lovell was arrested within a week of the shooting by U.S. Marshals in Amory, Miss., and extradited to Calhoun County. He was transferred Dec. 21 to Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery, according to jail records.

• June 11 — An unknown assailant shot Charles Jennings, 46, in the back while he was walking near the 1000 block of West 15th Street in Anniston. Jennings told police he heard the shot and felt a pain his back. He died at Regional Medical Center as a result of the wound.

The case remains unsolved, and police recently said they had no active leads.

• Aug. 1 — Lucretia French, also known as Khris Wisdom, was found facedown and unconscious near the 2000 block of Walnut Avenue in Anniston during the early-morning hours of July 18. She was found bleeding with a large scrape on her left shoulder, and her purse and wallet were found empty nearby, according to police reports.

French was flown to UAB hospital where she remained on life support for two weeks until she died on Aug. 1. Due to head trauma from the attack, she was unresponsive until her death, police said. The case is unsolved, and police in December had no active leads.

• Nov. 15 — The Wellborn community was shocked when a couple was found dead in their home at 416 S. Corning St. Police believe Thomas Hart, 50, shot his wife of nearly 23 years, Wendy Hart, before turning the gun on himself. Family members blamed Thomas Hart's actions on health problems.

The state Forensic Sciences Department in December had not returned an official report. Police believe the crime was a murder-suicide.

• Dec. 25 — The body of Donald Cameron, 47, of Ohatchee was discovered at his home the day after Christmas.

Police found the body after receiving a call from Cameron's mother, who was expecting him to visit her in New Jersey for Christmas.

Calhoun County Coroner Pat Brown ruled the death a homicide caused by a gunshot wound, but the estimated time of death was not released by authorities, who said Cameron likely died more than 24 hours before his body was discovered on the morning of Dec. 26.

• Dec. 31 — Angela Powell, 40, allegedly shot her boyfriend, Steve Ray Morrison, 35, at their home at 834 Charlie Penny Road around 3:45 p.m. The shooting was apparently the result of a domestic dispute.

Morrison was pronounced dead at the scene. Powell reported the shooting to the Sheriff's Office and was arrested without incident when deputies arrived. She has been charged with murder.

Three other people died violent deaths in Calhoun County, though none of the cases seem likely to be prosecuted as homicide. In two cases, men were shot to death in violent encounters with law enforcement officers.

• Sept. 8 — David Trantham, 36, was shot to death in his yard at 5326 Cash St. in Saks. His neighbor, Corey McDonald, 22, admitted to police that he shot Trantham after trying to break up a physical fight between Trantham and his wife. McDonald shot Trantham with a rifle from about 80 feet away, but claimed self-defense, according to his attorney, Tim Burgess. A grand jury in November decided against charging McDonald with a crime in the case.

• Sept. 27 — Law-enforcement officials shot and killed Raymond Versansky, 36, of Wellington, after he led Anniston police officers and Calhoun County sheriff's deputies on a high-speed chase, according to Brown. The chase ended on U.S. 431 North when officers rear-ended Versansky's truck, causing it to flip. The wreck occurred about two miles north of Alabama 144.

Versansky then used a knife to threaten law enforcement, who tried twice to subdue him with a stun gun, said Sheriff Larry Amerson. Both times, Versansky pulled out the prongs and continued to threaten them with the knife, Amerson said. He died from multiple gunshot wounds.

• Dec. 29 — Oxford police officers shot Sonny Dale Wheeler Dec. 29 after he allegedly fired at them during a confrontation at his home on Caffey Drive North.

Police Chief Bill Partridge said the confrontation stemmed from a report of domestic violence that brought officers to the home. The officers found Wheeler pinned on the floor by another man, Partridge said. When Wheeler was allowed to stand, he retreated to a bedroom, where he fired a rifle through the door, striking one officer in the face with a pellet of birdshot, police said.

The incident still is being investigated, and the officers involved are suspended with pay.

County catching up with state and national trends

While the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center released numbers earlier this year showing a 13 percent statewide homicide decrease from 2007 to 2008, Calhoun County saw just the opposite in that time frame, with a 15 percent increase. In 2006 and 2007, the county had 16 and 17 homicides, respectively. But those numbers dropped off in 2009, and there seem to be no sure answers as to why.

Calhoun County wasn't the only area to see the decline in homicides in 2009. Preliminary FBI crime figures for the first half of the year show crime falling across the country, even in a time of high unemployment, foreclosures and layoffs. Most surprisingly, murder and manslaughter fell 10 percent for the first half of the year.

"I have no real explanations other than (homicides) come in peaks and valleys," said Partridge. "It's more of a morals thing. If you get people together who are drinking, and in hot weather … often that's the formula that leads to homicide."

Partridge said preventing homicide is difficult because officers can't police inside the home if police aren't involved prior to the crime.

Anniston police Lt. Rocky Stemen said homicide is a crime that's never predictable.

"A lot of times, in a bad economy, property and personal crimes increase," he said.

Amerson said violence escalates with high unemployment rates and drug use, but "when dealing with the complexities of human behavior, I don't think there's a way to resolve (why people commit violent actions)."

Higher population rates

Homicide rates seemed not to be affected by 2009's economic spiral. An expert who studies crime trends said population factors could be affecting homicide rates.

"The segment of the population associated with highly violent crimes traditionally hasn't been heavily employed anyway," said Richard Kania, who heads Jacksonville State University's criminal justice department. "The people losing jobs now are not the problematic part of the population. Usually, it's young people or those caught up in the drug culture … people who are not as affected by a downturn in the economy."

Kania, a criminologist who studies crimes related to deadly force and violence, said typical homicide suspects are young, in their late teens and early 20s. He said a plateau in that age group's population could be a reason homicide rates are shrinking.

"Some studies look at the number of kids starting high school. You can predict by the number in high school the homicide rate with some accuracy. And that group has not seen as big of growth in population (in recent years)," Kania said.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the national violent crime rate declined between 1999 and 2008 by 41 percent. In the 2000 Census, children 4 years old and younger were a smaller group than each of the age brackets above them. The oldest children in that smaller group are now entering what Kania calls "the crime-prone years."

"The statistics now should be at their peak, as the high percentage of kids who were 5 to 14 then are now 13 to 23 — the most violent years," he said. "There should be a continuing decline in violent crime as those kids age out and a smaller percentage of the population enters the high crime-prone years."

He said the population of the younger group peaked in the 1990s and has been declining ever since.

The shrinking of that age group, however, is not the only factor that could explain the declining homicide rate, Kania said.

"Single-parent households are a major factor and very strong predictor of boys getting into serious trouble," he said.

According the Census Bureau, the number of single-parent households has held steady from 1994 to 2006 at about 9 percent. However, the size of U.S. households has declined, so fewer children are living in the single-parent homes, Kania said.

"I believe that a ratio of adults-to-kids in a household also is a factor in delinquency, but I am not sure of any studies showing that, or the opposite," he said. "It just seems likely that the more kids per adult will mean less supervision and reduced parental influence, and fewer kids per adult will allow for more supervision and greater parental influence, and that should reduce delinquency, too."

Tackling drugs and domestic issues

Kania said a focus by law enforcement on societal blights such as substance abuse and domestic violence help fight violent crime.

"Drug-suppression policies have helped some," Kania said. "If police can break up drug markets, drug-related homicides will decline. But it doesn't guarantee that they will go away."

He said emphasis on domestic violence prevention can also significantly reduce the risk of homicides. Amerson said the Sheriff's Office tries to curb violence through prevention.

"We're more prone to domestic violence arrests, rehab opportunities, protection from abuse orders and mental health intervention. I really think those kinds of things are important because we're getting people sooner," he said. "None of these are the answer, but all of them are contributing to making things better."

The county's District Attorney's Office and local law enforcement place a strong emphasis on preventing domestic violence, and, in the past few years, have issued increasing numbers of protection from abuse orders.

Through the third quarter of 2009, family court judges in Calhoun County granted 280 protection orders.

Protection orders are designed to prevent violent or threatening acts, harassment, contact or communication with a victim who claims to feel threatened by a member of their family or domestic partner. Through this process, a judge can order a person to stay clear of a victim's home, school or workplace.

Lorri Sawyer, a victim's services officer with the District Attorney's Office, said in the past, names of domestic homicide victims have oftentimes been familiar, because the victims had come to the courts for help. But in 2009, only two of the county's six criminal homicides stemmed from a domestic issue.

Supporters of protection orders say they're effective because they're proactive. The penalty for violation is an arrest and misdemeanor charge.

Kania said changing societal mores have some value in the process of stopping violent crime.

"Just as we've taught the current generation from an early age to reduce domestic violence, the next generation's issue will be substance abuse."

There's been a tendency to resort to extreme violence to deal with trivial issues when drugs or alcohol are involved, Kania said.

"There's a strong connection with illegal substances (and violence), and some connection — though not as strong — with abuse of alcohol," he said. "It's predominantly a youth phenomenon, but is also strongly associated with families who are not in the best of economic conditions and single-parent families at the margin of poverty."

Stopping the violence

Anniston police Lt. Stemen said he thinks programs such as the local Stop the Violence effort help deter young people from committing violent crimes. Kania said research has shown such programs are helpful.

Rev. Frederick Durant, co-founder of Anniston's Stop the Violence, said the organization was inspired by the community-wide effect of violent crime. He is the pastor of Sunlight Missionary Baptist Church in Eastaboga, and also a staff member for Anniston Funeral Services.

In March 2007, he decided to step in and do something after two young men were gunned down in west Anniston.

"I've done many funerals, but I was given the unfortunate opportunity to do the funeral for those two young men, who were killed at the same time," he said. "I've never seen young people devastated like at that funeral. After that, God gave me a vision to change the community."

The organization works to rebuild relationships between the community, law enforcement and churches.

"I know police officers do the best they can, but sometimes people get the wrong concept of the law. And a lot of people felt like because they didn't go to church, the church didn't care. We're trying to paint a picture to show the community that somebody does care."

The three issues Stop the Violence seeks to target are poverty, lack of education and drugs and alcohol abuse. He said those three create an environment that fosters violent crimes. Durant pointed out that the majority of 2009's homicides took place outside of the low-income, Stop the Violence-focused areas.

To battle those issues, the group feeds the area's homeless population and less fortunate in the community on Saturdays. He said volunteers distribute between 200 and 300 sack lunches each weekend.

They also hold "fun days" in low-income areas of town to familiarize residents with local law enforcement and create a safe atmosphere. The group also provides job training to help residents find employment, and takes part in getting people placed in drug- and alcohol-abuse-treatment programs.

Next on the list of goals is a mentoring program, Durant said.

"I believe (violence) is a learned behavior. If we start with younger people, we can curb it," he said.

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